Foreign News and Analysis Since April 2005 -- Formerly China Confidential -- For America and Israel and Their Friends AbroadForeign Confidential ™
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Clare M. Lopez on What's Really Happening in Libya
The Conspiracy to Use NATO Against Israel
--- On Thu, 25/8/11, Confidential Reporter
OK. Thank you.
Thursday, 25 August 2011
By Clare M. Lopez
Watching the jubilant Libyan rebels celebrating in the streets of Tripoli, it's easy to get caught up in the euphoria of the moment as a brutal tyrant is at last being brought down. The spokeswoman at the Department of State was giddy with visions of those "universal human rights" the Libyan Transitional National Council (TNC) supposedly espouses. RAND trotted out Frederic Wehrey, a senior policy analyst at the Rand Corporation, who perfectly seriously discussed the "weapons buy-back programs" that he thinks NATO countries might launch in Libya to disarm everybody once the fighting is done. Even commentators at the usually more sober-minded Fox News were giving President Obama "B" grades for his "success" in helping remove Qaddafi from power. One of the only analysts of substance who seemed to be keeping his head even as all around him were happily losing theirs has been the IDC Herzliya Gloria Center's Barry Rubin, who rightly faults the Obama administration for approaching events in the Middle East "not as a lion but as a jackal" and projecting weakness by demonstrating a fundamental failure to perceive what is, in fact, a determined regional sweep by the forces of jihad and shariah. As Rubin wrote in his 21 August 2011 post, "The gap between dominant Western perceptions of the Middle East and the region's reality is dangerously wide."
Part of that reality is actually on full display with the online posting of Libya's "Draft Constitutional Charter for the Transitional Stage. As the equally level-headed Dr. Andrew Bostom wrote in his 22 August 2011 posting, "the salient feature of Libya's new draft constitution is Part 1, Article 1: Islam is the Religion of the State, and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence (Sharia)." [emphasis added]
For those still unsure of what is actually happening in Libya, that Article, which places Islamic law (shariah) at the very top of the constitution, means that principles Jeffersonian republicans consider foundational to a democratic system—such as equality, individual freedom, pluralism, tolerance, minority protections, consent of the governed, natural rights/natural law derived through exercise of human reason, independent (secular) judiciary, and a vibrant free press—even if mentioned later in the draft text, have no real validity. It is what comes first and is stated explicitly in the constitution that carries the real weight. In Libya's case, that means Islamic law.
That should not surprise anyone who's been watching Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the Libyan Transitional National Council spokesman: that prominent bruise in the middle of his forehead is called a zubibah. It's the bump a devout Muslim gets from pressing his face to the floor five times daily while praying. Described by human rights advocates as a strong proponent of the rule of law, Jalil studied Islamic law at the University of Libya. He's also served as a judge, prosecutor, and Justice Minister under Qaddafi's rule. So, he's an experienced and knowledgeable jurist. The only question, then, is "Of which law is Jalil such a champion?" The obvious answer is Islamic law—shariah.
Western analysts, leaders, and media seem somehow oblivious to the fact that Middle Eastern Muslim Arabs have nothing in their experience to prepare them for anything remotely resembling "universal human rights." Quite to the contrary, these Islamic tribal societies jumbled together into nation states by arbitrary lines drawn on a 20th century map, are far more familiar with incessant, remorseless warfare than Western concepts of rights or reason. Islam is a belief system based on revelation, not rational thought. Neither democracy nor recognition of the worth of the individual is an automatic default position for human beings. And indeed, under the Articles of the 1990 Cairo Declaration, all the member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (now the Organization of Islamic Cooperation—OIC) opted out of the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights and proclaimed instead their adherence only to shariah. Libya remains an OIC member and the new head of its TNC (just officially recognized by the U.S. as Libya's legitimate governing authority) is a shariah scholar.
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Kosovo ... Libya ... Palestine?
Tripoli Today, Tel Aviv Tomorrow?
A once unthinkable conspiracy is afoot--to deploy NATO forces against a strategic U.S. ally that is also the only democracy in the Middle East.
The country is Israel, of course, the tiny Jewish State that has never known a day of peace since its miraculous rebirth in its ancient homeland.
Barack Obama's reelection is central to the perfidious plot. Obama is the only U.S. Presidential candidate who is sufficiently hostile to Israel to go along with the conspiracy, as the potential usefulness of the only anti-Israel GOP hopeful, Ron Paul, is neutralized by his marginal appeal and old-line isolationism (recalling the likes of aviator Charles Lindbergh and other Nazi supporters and sympathizers in the years leading up to the Second World War).
The Conspirators
The three (European-born) authors of the anti-Israel conspiracy are Jimmy Carter's former National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Obama foreign policy advisor Samantha Power, and her patron, George Soros, the anti-Zionist, leftwing billionaire. Brzezinski, who was the architect of the Carter administration's intervention in Afghanistan on the side of Islamist warlords--before and in order to bring about the Soviet invasion of that country--and the brain behind the administration's catastrophic complicity in the Islamist overthrow of Iran's pro-American, modernizing monarch, Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, has advocated U.S. downing of Israeli warplanes if Israel attacks Iran's nuclear installations without Washington's approval. Power has proposed using U.S. and United Nations troops to impose a "Responsibility to Protect" (Palestinians) solution on Israel.
The Longterm Objective
The conspiracy's longterm objective is to use the R2P doctrine and the Kosovo-inspired intervention in Libya's civil war--on the side of Al Qaeda-connected Islamists--as a precedent for forcing Israel to withdraw to indefensible borders in order to create a "contiguous Palestinian state," as Obama put it in a recent speech, consisting of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, which is already a de-facto independent, Islamist state; the disputed "West Bank" territories of Judea and Samaria, and East Jerusalem, which Israel liberated from Jordan in the Six-Day War of June 1967; and a land corridor connecting Gaza with the aforementioned inland areas west of the Jordan river. It is further understood that Hamas will emerge as the ruler of the combined, new entity, and that this inherently irredentist mini-state will eventually merge with a Muslim Brotherhood-ruled country in what is now the Kingdom of Jordan following the inevitable overthrow of the Jordanian monarchy, thus creating an Islamist Palestine on both sides of the river Jordan that will ultimately "liberate" all of Palestine--meaning, the destruction of Israel, whose very existence the conspirators regard as a historic "mistake" and the root cause of regional instability.
The Crucial Player
NATO-member Turkey, Obama's model Islamocracy, is a crucial player in the plot. Turkey's Prime Minister recently called for U.N. airstrikes on Israel. More important, Turkey is a major military power and a potential existential threat to Israel, especially given a scenario in which Israel would be forced to defend itself on at least two land fronts--i.e. against Egypt and Jordan/Palestine.
Like their Shiite Islamist Iranian rivals, Turkey's Sunni Islamist leaders have adopted an imperialist foreign policy--i.e. a policy that aims to overthrow a nation's power relationships with other nations, known as the status quo. But Turkish imperialism, in contrast with Iranian imperialism, is supported by the Obama administration. Having failed in their efforts to appease and align with Iran in order to pacify Afghanistan and the Middle East, Obama and his advisors are now bent on backing the emergence of an Islamist, neo-Ottoman Empire, hoping to use a Greater Turkey as both a bulwark against a nuclear-armed Iran and a sword against resurgent Russia and rising China and their strengthening ties--Obama's answer to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Political and overlapping organized and state Islam is the tool; the vast energy resources of Central Asia, the prize; countering Russia and dismembering China, by stirring rebellion among restive Muslims, priceless! (Click here to read more about this new version of the Great Game.)
The Unknown Factor
Syria is the unknown factor--a potential spoiler whose actions could actually facilitate and accelerate the conspiracy, causing its implementation in the coming months, as shocking as this may seem. With the fall of Libya's dictator, all eyes are on Syria's embattled despot. Turkey has hinted at intervening in the Muslim Brotherhood-backed, Sunni, majority, Syrian uprising against the hated, Iran-backed, Alawite (Shiite branch) minority, Assad regime; and Obama has explicitly called for Assad's resignation. When push comes to shove, Syria could attack Israel to get back at the United States and muddy the waters. Damascus and Tehran have already indirectly attacked Israel, using Egyptian Islamist and Gaza-based, Palestinian Islamist terrorists as proxies, in order to distract attention from the Syrian regime's atrocities and brutality. This year's cross-border, Nakba-Day riots were similarly orchestrated by Syria and Iran.
An Israeli response to a direct Syrian assault would most likely bring Iranian proxies Hezbollah and Hamas into the conflict, and, quite possibly, Iran, itself, which has repeatedly vowed to "burn Tel Aviv" and bomb Israel's Negev nuclear reactor. Should Israeli population centers come under heavy missile bombardment, crushing Israeli airstrikes against Gaza and Lebanese targets--missile launchers deliberately positioned in and around densely populated civilian areas--would almost certainly result in international condemnation of Israel (the only nation that is not allowed to defend itself) and thunderous calls for UN action against the Jewish State, setting the stage for anotherphony R2P intervention.
NATO against Israel?
It's a horrible thought. But history has time and again shown that the unthinkable can happen.
Related: The Iranian Plot to Destroy Israel
Copyright © 2012 Foreign Confidential™
It is impossible not to wish the Libyan people well in their quest to throw off tyranny. Their struggle is far from over, though, even as triumphant gunmen strut about Qaddafi's burned out Tripoli compound decked out in his headgear and jewelry. One suspects that the looting and revenge-taking has just begun even as a guerrilla insurgency by remaining Qaddafi loyalists sputters to life, well-equipped with all the latest weaponry from Qaddafi's armories, including Russian-made surface-to-air missiles that have many observers worried. Those taking over are no less a cause for concern: as Walid Phares points out in his insightful Fox News analysis of 23 August 2011, the Libyan TNC is a motley crew comprising "former diplomats, bureaucrats, and military officers from the old regime" as well as "politicians and leaders from movements and groups from the political left, Marxists, Socialists, Arab Nationalists, liberals and Islamists." As in Egypt and elsewhere across the region, however, it is the proponents of shariah who are the best organized and most determined to impose their agenda in the post-revolutionary milieu. Their push for power in Libya already is underway, openly supported by Yousuf al-Qaradawi and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and will accelerate from positions within the TNC as its grip on the country is consolidated.
By dealing preferentially with the Muslim Brotherhood and other shariah-adherents in both Egypt and Syria, U.S. leadership is enabling the substitution of secular tyranny with Islamic tyranny in both places. That segments of the population in these places actually clamor to be ruled by shariah does not make them democracies. If the U.S. does the same thing in Libya and fails to provide strong, visible support to the genuine democrats, liberals, and reformers that do still exist in Libya, the outcome there will not be the one dreamy-eyed groupies of the Arab Spring envisioned, but another new regime, founded on Islamic law, that is hostile to American interests and those of our remaining friends and allies.
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Harold,
This conspiracy to use NATO against Israel fits into the theme
of my just-released book,
THE POWER ELITE AND THE SECRET NAZI
PLAN.
There is about 15% new material in the book that is not in my NewsWithViews series on the subject.
Please tell FOREIGN CONFIDENTIAL about my new book.
Best wishes,
Dennis Cuddy
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